this is bbc news. the headlines: venezuela's government and the opposition have signed a preliminary agreement to find a way out of the country's political crisis. on the same day, the united states said that it would allow the american oil company chevron to resume some activity in venezuela. rescue teams are searching for survivors after a mudslide on the italian island of ischia. at least one person has died and 11 people are missing. mud and debris swept through the region after a night of torrential rain. the former pakistan prime minister, imran khan, has addressed hundreds of thousands of supporters in rawalpindi, telling them he regretted not being able

to bring the corrupt and the powerful to justice. the government to call a snap election. now on bbc news, click. that's so cool! this week, the robots are taking over. are they going to do weird experiments on us? no, but we are going to see what man can learn from machine. some of them are chasing tails they don't have. some are beating us at football! ah, good skills! other games are available,

including this one created for people with autism. catch it! good start! and lj provides some expert commentary on a new fairground ride. screaming welcome to the national robotarium. i believe you came to see some robots. we've got robots. rock music plays now this is our kind of place. just opened at heriot—watt university in edinburgh, the national robotarium is a research centre for scientists to take the latest robotics and explore the best ways they can be used in industry as well as all walks of life. one of the aims of the national robotarium is to try and work out what work works for humans, and what work doesn't work for humans, and therefore

the robots should do that work instead — that's what they are trying to work out. what? if you didn't understand what that was about, maybe the robots could explain it better. what sort of research goes on here? research around human—robot interaction, artificial intelligence and trustworthy autonomous systems. are they going to do weird experiments on us? no, this is a kind of place where they work with industry to explore robotics and society and in the workplace. great! i love field trips. i feel excited. i well, don't we all. one of the superstars of the robot world in general is spot, boston dynamics�* flagship all—terrain dog—o—pod. out of the box, spot comes with lots of simple sounding but really actually very complicated abilities. that's my favourite. that's the bit i love, the side to side. laughs it can walk, balance, and it has lots of built—in safety features. and then it's up to researchers like rahul to try and customise

it for new applications. we are looking at using this in construction sectors, especially getting them to walk around in confined spaces like in a nuclear decommissioned site. one of the things we are doing right now is adding some custom sensors like 3d laser scanners, generating a 3d map of a construction site. but what is doing right now using the manipulator arm to semi—autonomously pick up a bottle. rahul has programmed in the idea of the bottle, the image of the bottle, and then spot is going on picking it up on its own. and it has done a good job. good boy! boston dynamics may have created the best—known quadruped robot in the world, but it is certainly not the only one. no, we have seen many on our travels — and james clayton has been to boston, to mit, where he has been meeting not a big dog, but a big cat.

here at click, we have been following this guy around for a few years now. the incredibly animal—like mini cheetah. the robot that can go over different types of terrain, you can even kick it and it will stay upright — in theory. it's amazing! laughs well, that was slightly awkward. but i am assured, it being a robot, it doesn't feel pain. moving on, i have been told, though, that the mini cheetah has gotten cleverer. the boffins here call it to learn by experience model. machine learning that allows the cheetah to negotiate objects through trial and error. and i am told it has learned how to play football. now i am no ronaldo, but i thought i would put it through its paces. but first, a piece to camera. 0k. we're going to play some

football — oh, i can't do any skills. this might take a long time. let's play some football! laughs i thought he was running after it! with that out of the way, it was time to test it out. laughs good skills! its close ball control was pretty good, but sometimes it seemed to be concentrating so hard on the football it forgot how to actually walk. and trying to tackle it was pretty hard too. it's quite scary! the researchers also decided to take it to places it had never been before to see how it would do. 0k. oh, can it do this? i am not actually sure, but we can give it a try. let's see if i can do it. oh wow!

0h... kind of. oh, look at it right itself. wow. so the thing is, it can't actually see the stairs, this is a blind controller. so it doesn't know that the stair is coming. it has to be totally reactive. so it hasn't learned how to do this, it is just reacting to falling, basically, down the stairs. yeah, i took a little bit of a risk. it is really impressive, but what are the real—world applications for this? daniela rus is the director of csail. the robot can carry things for us and can traverse dangerous territory and present us with information that is really too difficult for us to reach ourselves. the robot could also carry things for us as we walk up a mountain pass. within a home, we have a lot of wheel—based robots, but those robots are not going to go up the stairs. but the mini cheetah will. so if you want your robot to deliver cookies before

bedtime, and the robot has to go from the kitchen to the bedroom up the stairs, then you really want the cheetah. the world cup in full swing, both the cheetah and i show you how hard it is to actually play football well. it's still learning and getting better, unlike me. but training to do this shows its versatility. perhaps there could even be robot pets in the future. that was james. back at the robotarium, we have moved on to a very different sort of robot. this is icub. this may be the size of five—year—old child but it is being used to analyse the interaction between brain and body in parkinson's patients. and in the future it may even be able to predict disease progression. it is very early days at the moment and really only a proof of concept that meaningful data for parkinson's and other neurological conditions can be transferred

from research into this form to be learnt from. there are cameras in the eyes and also the body is covered in tactile sensors, which means if you touch it on the legs, the chest, the arms or even the fingertips, it can feel you. parkinson's is one of several degenerative diseases which new technology and techniques may be able to slow the onset of. and nick kwek has been to meet someone who is determined that his condition won't take everything from him. jim maxwell is one of around 5,000 people in the uk living with motor neurone disease — a terminal illness. putting shoes on is impossible for me. lifting trousers up is impossible for me to do. the illness is starting to take a good hold of me. known as mnd or als, the condition gradually takes away movement from people. and for almost everyone with it, their voice too. to actually live in a world

where you can't speak and be heard, to me it sounds alien and frightening at the same time. thanks to some new tech, jim is going to record his voice from home, so it can be digitally reproduced if he loses it. it is really important that i do bank this voice, so that i can still be seen, still be me. i will always be me is an interactive storybook by intel and dell, created in partnership with rolls—royce, the mnd association and edinburgh—based startup speak unique. it conveys the effects of mnd written in the first person. do you think it is ok? some of them are ok. it takes around an hour to read, a fraction of the time it would traditionally to record in a professional voice—over booth. and all the recordings from the book are sent here to processing. personalised speaking... all of our voices are built on what we call a base voice, which records hundreds and hundreds of hours

of people speaking. which means that when it comes to recording an individual, we've got all those examples already in our system. and so with the short amount of recording that the individual can do through the book, we can then adapt our base voice to sound like that one individual. as well as replicating, the company says it is able to restore voices back to healthy sounding speech. at first they were really fast, but it might be ok if they were slow down. our system understands what, say, a normal articulation pattern would be, so if someone comes to record and they have noticed their articulation is slurred or they have effort in their speech, we can disregard anything that might be part of their disease and retain just what is them. but does it actually sound like the person? only one way to find out. "probably have some questions about all this." digital voice: this is based on a recording of my voice. it means that i can continue to communicate in my own voice. hmm. "when you talk to me and i want to listen..."

for someone who has been diagnosed with this, every minute counts. and that process is extremely meaningless except for the fact that eventually it generates a voice. so essentially it is a way to get people to speak to their loved ones in ways that can get them to adjust to what is going to happen, and what is coming. dad has always been the life and soul of the party. if you walk into places, he is normally the first person you hear. he is the laugh you hear, the voice you hear. - to even still have that, even if it is not coming from him, ithink will be great. how important is it to be able to hear your dad's voice once he is gone? sometimes he says stuff. and i hear it and i am like, oh, please don't - forget that, you know? if i didn't manage i to capture it...yeah. i think my daughters might be a bit sick of hearing me, but i think it is essential for me... "voice might start to change..." aland deep learning

is improving at a rate that none of us can actually even comprehend. to me, it says that the fidelity of the systems will start to sound much, much more like people, without having to have that huge cost of capturing data just for the sake of generating voice banking. "and i will always love you." that's it. what did you think of it, jim? yeah. some of the phrases and wording, it hits a raw nerve. it talks about where i will need help from my girls, whether, to get dressed — when obviously when they were babies, that was myjob. yeah. it is quite strong. of course, creating a voice bank is just one part of the puzzle. putting it to use is another thing altogether. when i am actually dead and gone, they can still go into the app, and still listen to my voice. so i might be gone but i will

still be there for them. time for a look at this week's tech news. first up, india may follow the eu in making all new mobile devices share a standard usb—c charger. according to the secretary of consumer affairs, india's government has reached a broad consensus on the idea. collapsed cryptocurrency exchange ftx owes its 50 largest creditors almost $3.1 billion, according to a court filing. ftx was the second—largest crypto exchange in the world before it filed for bankruptcy in the us last week. people lost their life savings, unfortunately. i wasn't in ftx, i hadn't invested in ftx, i was a part of the voyager downfall, lost a lot of money there. after months of speculation, sony has

announced a launch date for its next generation virtual reality headset. the playstation vr2 will cost $550 when it launches worldwide on 22 february next year. and finally, is this the future of vending machines? sandwich chain subway has begun selling products in smart fridges that it says can listen to you and answer your questions. the first fridge is up and running at the university of california in san diego. amusement parks. big and small, i'm trying to visit them all. making rides fun, exciting and above all safe, uses frankly astonishing levels of tech. and new high—tech rides start with a plan — in this case at ride manufacturer kmg's factory in the netherlands. they are building aerospace,

soon to be the tallest upsidedown thrill ride in the uk, atjust over 65 metres. the ride packs into four trucks to drive to its new home, 500 miles away in wales. the £3 million jewel in barry island pleasure park's crown towers above the village. pretty certain many of you are saying "yes please" at this point. the rain is not going to stop me trying that. the crew on the other hand would rather stay on the ground. so it is off to the pay box to meet harry, who has opened the ride especially for us. it does seem like it is just a few buttons, but in the grand scheme of things it is very complicated. you have to know what you are doing with it. that computer is so clever. it will tell you how fast it is going, where it is going, how long it has been going for, how much weight is on there, the wind speed. yes, that computer is essential for a ride of this scale to be safe. when the weather is colder, the oil inside the hydraulics thickens, requiring regular climbs to the middle platform to adjust the pressure. miserable day. it was ok when i left

the house. i am actually in shorts. he chronicled the whole build. there's the middle part with a giant clutch inside, like a car. while running, the clutch engages the arm to the motors to drive it around. and look at that lovely timelapse of those eight main hydraulic rams unfolding. of course he has come today to show his support. this is the crew here, the lady in the pink there will be riding in it. better her than me, it is bad enough riding it when the weather was nice. 75 mph, 7a mph i think it is. in the rain. you are going to get wet. you will get off and be wetter than on the log flume. thanks steve! all right, let's try it out. why are you all smiling?! safety sensors are everywhere, confirming the restraints are locked, the gate�*s closed and the floor drops correctly. it is intentionally loud, by the way, to add to the occasion. oh my goodness! oh no! the whole system is monitored remotely from the netherlands.

screaming. it is so high up, it's amazing! i can't believe... i'm going to have to go back down again. screaming. that was like doing aerobatics in an aeroplane. i mean, without the aeroplane. that was...a phenomenal experience. there is just time for a quick chat in this marvellous vintage 30—year—old waltzer, a much loved fairground favourite. there is no technology in this ride, but you won't find a better one than this, and it is still entertaining people. but some things like

the aerospace, when i finally went on it and started going around, yeah, it's amazing. i think that is what technology has made these rides possible. perhaps one day there will be a bigger version, but barry island's tallest attraction will be staying near the top of my rides list for quite some time. wow, that was lj. now the national robotarium is full of talking heads. although this looks more like that kraftwerk album that you never bought. we research and studied the way human robots interact with each other — for example, what are the best things robots should say and how to say it. essentially researchers are monitoring how comfortable that includes how close we want to get to them, what we say, even our facial expressions. we are trying to make this interaction really natural and very much humanlike, but we still find out that humans still perceive robots as robots and not yet as another human, or another agent. the first thing you

need to see is this. the face is protected onto this translucent mask from the back of the head. wow, and second thing you need to know is the company is called furhat robotics. why? because it has no hair, so it needs a hat, just like that. of course, we all react in our own unique ways to different things. and people on the autistic spectrum can find some situations, and indeed many mainstream videogames, overwhelming. but one startup based over in glasgow has designed a vr game specifically for autistic people. and paul carterjoined some play testers to give it a go. thomas is autistic. and he loves gaming. that is so cool! his mum sarah is autistic too, and there are some aspects of gaming that don't make sense to her. the hardest bit for me is if something isn't obvious or is a little more challenging, it is really frustrating.

experts say many autistic people often find these kinds of difficulties in gaming. education systems and entertainment devices are created by neurotypical people for neurotypical people. and what means is it doesn't necessarily reflect on the differences in the ways that people process information, but also the things that might be overwhelming from either a sensory perspective or a cognitive processing perspective. this is going to be fun. today thomas and sarah are trying a new game. catch it! i good start! blink and the vacuum of space has been developed by changingday, a startup based in glasgow. it is one of very few companies making games designed specifically for autistic people. i have a 26—year—old daughter who is autistic and we have spent many years trying to find things that will help her in her everyday life. when i tried a vr headset

on the first time about six years ago, i thought, i wonder if autistic people could benefit from vr. the main object of the game is to make the world's greatest sandwich. as you do. but after the sandwich creating experiment goes wrong, you have to spend the game chasing around after these little guys. so what kind of things do you have to bear in mind when you are designing something like this? so if there was a particular mechanic that we thought might be problematic, maybe a barrier to play for some autistic people, or in general, we wouldn't include it, avoiding stressful game mechanics. so time limits are not in the game. but also allowing really in—depth customisations. if there is a particular sound in the game that someone finds quite triggering, you canjust go and turn that sound off. so i am able to give it a go? yeah, absolutely. i wasn't really sure what to expect, but it does a greatjob of leaning into what vr is all about and putting you into a totally different environment. oh, cool! this is one of the kind of design features in our game,

from an accessibility perspective. when it gets a board up and it is telling you that we're going undercover, and here is the characters you are going to meet and so on. to give the player an expectation of where they are going and reduce some of the anxiety you might have. one of changingday�*s hopes is that the game could help better prepare autistic people for real—life situations. you have an area in the space station, an airport basically, a setting some autistic people might find challenging in real life. large crowds and the noise around you. looking where we can present that within a game context and a way which is more fun. my experiences of this are going to be very different than that of an autistic person. but my initial reactions are that it is undeniably fun, and it is really clear to see the potential benefits that something like this could have. oh yes! i threw it and it worked! but how is it even possible to create a game for every autistic person? really we're looking at targeting the middle of the autistic spectrum. people at the very high—end will be gamers themselves perhaps already anyway,

and maybe won't benefit from some of the things that are included in our game. whether it is possible to create one game that fits all autistic people, of course that is impossible. at best what we could hope to do is create something that is as broadly inclusive as possible. there is an opportunity to be able to reach people who may not otherwise be interacting with the same kinds of games. that was amazing! - i like the manoeuvrability. like how your guy will do . what you would usually do. cross the street. changingday isn't the only startup innovating in this area. us—based company florio makes educational vr experiences that aim to help autistic children cope better in the real world. but they aren't games. autistic people don't need to be changed. what they do need is a game that is designed specifically for them, to help them get from start to finish,

because sometimes in gameplay there are situations that they don't react well to or don't understand. and we are trying to clear those barriers for them. blink and the vacuum of space will be released injanuary. yay! that was paul, and that is it from us here at the national robotarium in edinburgh. and it's notjust our time that is running out. goodbye. five, four, three, two, one... are they really- allowed to do that? wait... hello there. strong southerly winds brought mild air across the whole of the country on saturday.

temperatures reached 15 degrees in the moray firth in scotland. now, we still have some windy weather around at the moment. low pressure to the west of the uk. that band of cloud has been catching up with the main band of cloud that's been bringing some rain but that weather front is sweeping that wetter weather down towards the south—east and along that weather front, that rain could hang around during sunday but we've got clearer skies following to the north and a few showers and scotland, northern ireland starting off with temperatures six degrees on sunday morning, much milder towards the south—east, and it looks like it's going to be a cloudy day for east anglia and the south—east of england. still could be some rain left overfrom overnight, may extend its way into hampshire as well, possibly easing off a bit in the afternoon. a shield of cloud extends through the midlands towards lincolnshire. other parts of england and wales seeing some sunshine. a few showers coming in off the irish sea. one or two showers for northern ireland and mainly western scotland, but some sunshine as well. now, the winds aren't going to be as strong on sunday, still quite blowy in the north—west of scotland for a while, and it's still going to be a mild day on sunday — temperatures 11 to 13 degrees. that's a few degrees lower, though, than it was on saturday for scotland and northern ireland. still got that rain threatening

the south—east of england. could see some wetter weather moving in during the evening, actually, and before that weather front finally moves away in time for monday and then, we're left with some lighter winds, some clearer skies. temperatures are going to be a bit lowerfor the start of the new week. and with lighter winds and clearer skies could be some mist and fog forming as well here and there, more especially across north—east england, which will be a little slow to clear. otherwise, i think we should see some sunshine breaking through. a few showers coming in, mainly across more western parts of england and wales, and then running eastwards across southern england, too. large parts of the country, though, will be dry, i think, in the afternoon and the temperatures are going to be a little bit lower — around 9—1! degrees — so it's beginning to cool off just a touch. and that really is a sign of things to come because all the mild atlantic air is struggling to reach us. essentially, we've got this big blocking area of high pressure that extends across scandinavia and pushes colder air our way. now, it's not desperately cold but after a very mild and very wet november, as we head into the start of december — the start of winter — things are looking much drier and also a little colder.

this is bbc news. i'm monika plaha. our top stories: free up the food aid. venezuela demands that dollars held overseas be spent on humanitarian programmes. a desparate search for survivors after deadly mudslides on the italian holiday island of ischia. the worry of course is, as more mud is cleared, what or who will be found underneath? pakistan's former prime minister, imran khan, addresses supporters to call for an end to corruption. # remember my name # fame! #